The Refugee as not Homo Sacer:Generating personas of 21,000 Palestinian Refugees living in Camps in Lebanon

BASMA EL BOUSSAKI, OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY

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I am sincerely thankful for my dissertation tutor Professor Cathrine Brun for her time, encouragement and commitment throughout my research

Lebanon is known to being the host of the highest number of Palestinian refugees (449,957, twelve camps forming 10% of the

population) up to year 20184,

there are various signs of the intention to exist perpetually, which is referred to as

“quasi-permanency”5

SPATIAL VIOLATIONSThe dismantling of the camp from its “relief scale” by the refugees stimulated the re-appropriation of the camp to a truly Palestinian one; granting one’s distant memory of their home reintroduced in a foreign land6. This practice of evolving transgressions evoked a symbol of resistance as we discover that this self-governing discipline, “supplanted the language of subordination with that of agreement and created a common area of synchronic relationships, negotiations between

governing and governed”7

DEVELOPMENT OF AN INFORMAL ECONOMY

SOFTENING CAMP BOUNDARIES: MERGING WITH THE CITY

Despite being confined within the camp’s boundaries the refugees develop their own informal economy. A new inhabitant of the camp interested in building a home would need to “seek approval from the owner of the top flat whose permission costs between 2000 and 3000 US dollars”8. This therefore supports the view that Shatila has developed to become “a space in abjection to the Agambenian understanding”8 that we can no longer describe Palestinian refugees as the “Homo sacer” - “an outcast, one whom it was pollution to associate, who dared to take no part in any

of the institutions of the state”9.

Entrance/Exit

Major LowSouk/MarketplaceMain internal pathsBoundary

Palestinian refugees etch the landscape they live in and their social relations and practices shape the camps physical and social environment, distinguishing it from the exterior, and thus imposes symbolic meaning10. This reforms our view of camps as possibly “the genesis of unexpected cities, new social environment, relationships and identification”11

Palestinian camps are truly “the background model for research on present-day camps” and a way for us to look further from the Agambens totalitarian observation of refugee camps and grant us to realise that one cannot overlook the social and cultural activity that erupts in these spaces of exception12.

Upon taking this contemporary observation one can see how due to location of the camp and unforeseen events, a camp can evolve to an “multi-ethnic slum”13 whereby an increased social mobility within the camp influences the urban fabric of the camp and its surrounding areas thus leading to a leakage into a city.